I have made some experiments on what seems to be a die hard kernel bug.I run the following program on my 2.1.78 linux alpha:#include <stdio.h>#include <syslog.h>

int main(){ openlog("uk", LOG_PID | LOG_PERROR, LOG_USER); syslog(LOG_ERR, "coucou"); return 0;}(I run it as a normal user)Then the kernel dumps this (on the console and in the messages):Jan 13 14:40:51 orion kernel: 00003f4e24>] (fffffc00003f4efc)Jan 13 14:40:51 orion kernel: uk: Exception at [<fffffc00003b15bc>] (fffffc00003b15c4)Jan 13 14:40:51 orion kernel: uk: Exception at [<fffffc00003f4e24>] (fffffc00003f4efc)Jan 13 14:40:51 orion kernel: uk: Exception at [<fffffc00003b15bc>] (fffffc00003b15c4)Jan 13 14:40:51 orion kernel: uk: Exception at [<fffffc00003f4e24>] (fffffc00003f4efc)[... many lines ...]Until the ^C I typed to stop the program find its way to the process.There are some variations in the adresses, but they all point tothe write_chan() function, in drivers/char/n_tty.c, or to __copy_user,in arch/alpha/lib/copy_user.S. What find its way to the stderr is a textlooking like this:<11>Jan 13 14:40:12 uk[5317]: coucou± ¨FUU¨FUUÐAUUAUU>UUÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿØ+ P;U... and many such buggy characters that scratch my xterm. If I redirectthe stderr to a file, I get a 21712 bytes long file but only these messagesand no quasi-crash:Jan 13 15:09:16 orion kernel: uk: Exception at [<fffffc00003f4e40>] (fffffc00003f4efc)Jan 13 15:09:16 orion kernel: uk: Exception at [<fffffc00003f4e40>] (fffffc00003f4efc)Jan 13 15:09:16 orion uk[5568]: coucoufrom /System.map:fffffc00003b1408 t write_chanfffffc00003b16f0 t normal_poll(at 0xfffffc00003b15bc there is a "ldq_u t5,0(s2)" instruction)and:

I ran also a strace on the program and here is what I get:[... standard ld.so initialisation ...]getxpid() = 4957writev(2, [{"\0<11>Jan 13 13:08:47 uk[4957]: "..., 37}, {"\n", 1}], 2) = 24574--- SIGINT (Interrupt) ---+++ killed by SIGINT +++Shouldn't writev return a number between -1 and 38 ? What does this 24574means ?

PS: I have tried 2.1.x kernel since version 2.1.65 on my alpha and I alwaysgot those "Exception at" loops on time to time, which is annoying. I guessone of my daemons (probably the portmapper) executes sometimes some syslog()that triggers the bug.